Interest in e-commerce is growing every year. Almost anyone can become an entrepreneur, all you have to do is open your own online store. This is not difficult to do; today there are specialized companies that provide Magento 2 development services. But before creating a website and after it, you need to work hard to make the business successful.
Decide what you will sell
If, at the time of making the decision to open an online store, you already have an understanding of what exactly will be sold there, that’s great. You can skip this step of the instructions. Otherwise, you need to choose one of two paths.
Popular niche
According to statistics, people most often buy clothes, shoes, children’s goods, household items, and electronics online. There are indeed a lot of buyers in these niches, but the competition is also huge. But this does not mean that the idea should be abandoned. You just need to narrow the offer and make it unique.
Specialized niche
There are much fewer buyers here, but they are, as they say in professional language, “hot”.
Tools for people of a certain profession, medical equipment, products for hairdressers, tailors. In this case, you will have to invest a lot of effort and money in advertising and promotion.
It’s better to check with analytics services how often users enter such a request to get an idea of how much people need the product.
Specialized niche markets, such as selling seasonal decor, cater to a specific but highly engaged audience. These buyers are often described as “hot” because they are actively searching for products to meet their seasonal needs. Selling seasonal decor can be a good market since it capitalizes on recurring demand throughout the year—think of Christmas, Halloween, or summer decorations. However, successful marketing and promotion will require significant effort and investment. You can use analytics services to gauge how frequently users search for seasonal decor to understand market demand better.
Having decided on a niche, you need to look for suppliers.
How to find a supplier for an online store
We pay attention to 4 main criteria:
1. Location. If a manufacturer or supplier operates abroad, cooperation may be complicated by certain factors, and the final cost of the product may increase.
2. Quality. You must make sure that the product is of high quality. For example, Chinese products can be very attractive in price and provide a good opportunity to earn money. But their quality leaves much to be desired, in most cases.
3. Conditions. It is difficult for beginning online stores to work with large wholesale quantities and is too risky. It is advisable to find a supplier whose working conditions are suitable. Today the dropshipping format is very popular, you can test it.
4. Price. It is very important to understand for yourself what price is acceptable at this stage of development and promotion. A price that is too low from a supplier should be alarming, but a price that is too high does not always determine ideal quality.
When these basic issues are resolved, you can begin to develop the site itself. It’s better to leave this to the professionals. Even if you manage to build a website using such a constructor, it will not work normally. In addition, you need to connect ordering and payment systems, and this is more difficult than simply assembling something like a portal out of cubes.
Next, the owner of a new online store will have an even more exciting activity – promotion.